Candidates have limited control in an interview. They cannot control the questions they will be asked nor can they control the manner by which employers will rank and weigh their responses. They cannot control interviewer bias.

Despite such noble intentions, candidates are frequently rejected or hired for other criteria. Over the past several months, we have had candidates eliminated by clients not for failing to check off the exhaustive list of requisite experience, skills or competencies but rather...

Many hiring managers read resumes in a cursory manner. They review the companies and roles that candidates have filled over their careers while making note of education levels, stability, the quality/consistency of overall career trajectory, and purported skills, knowledge and competencies.

Executive search processes and their outcomes fascinate me to no end. I enjoy trying to figure out how organizations determine their requirements and how well the outcomes line up to them. The recent decision to hire Ron Tavener as OPP Commissioner is a case in point.

In our last post we discussed the temptations facing unemployed executives to move with extreme haste in finding a new role. Conceptualizing job loss as akin to falling off a horse they associate ‘down time' with unproductive, time-consuming activity.

Every week, without exception, we meet executives who have jumped back on their horses in this very manner and embraced a ‘spray and pray' job search strategy. For some it may work like a charm but for the majority, dare I say the vast majority, it is the wrong approach.

The message for companies is pay attention, respect personal dignity, gives candidates a voice and some control over the process, and treat them as partners in an important relationship. Not only will companies have a higher chance of hiring them, on terms possibly more favorable, but as it turns out, keeping them.

What will the Nortel crowd do? If history is a guide, not much!

November 8, 2008

The current crisis at Nortel is pushing another wave of executives into the frigid employment waters. If history is any guide, many will not transition very well.
For many years, Nortel took pride in hiring the ‘best of the best’. They cultivated a competitive full contact culture where high potentials and high performers were promoted from role to role, division to division, country to country and year to year. Intellect ruled, the company thrived, innovation flourished, and everyone from senior execs to engineers took pride in their contributions to that success.
During the last tech bubble, many executives left Nortel to found and/or lead telecom and photonics startups. Investors salivated and the supremely confident startup newbies were showered with cash. They scoffed at suggestions that their transitions would in any way be difficult, arguing that while their entire careers were spent in Nortel, they were always immersed in entrepreneurial endeavors. They described new technologies they helped launch, business units they helped spin off, new markets they helped developed, joint ventures they help spear-head. Because they moved around so frequently within Nortel, they insisted that they were nimble and adaptable.
The reality was that while a few did thrive many, many more did not adapt. They were unable to move from a massive resource rich, process oriented conglomerate to an early staged company with little of anything of those things. They could not adapt to the cadence of a startup, the improvisation, the scramble in the marketplace. They had never seen the entirety of a business let alone built one from scratch. They were not street fighters, they were skillful professional boxers stepping into the back alley for the first time.……and they got pummeled.
To be fair, a number of very successful companies have been born out of the bowels of BNR and Nortel and a number of very smart people have gone on to create very successful organizations. But many professional managers coming out of that organization are low-risk, big company managers who seek out small companies only because they cannot find big ones. And they learn the definition of hubris the hard way unfortunately at the expense of the organizations that hire them.
The Nortel crowd coming into the market today will face a different set of challenges. The market is now wary of their transitional skills and they will be evaluated far more rigorously than their predecessors. This is not an indictment of Nortel per se, though the cockiness and arrogance that it bred blinded many of their executives. Instead it is a warning that spending your entire career in one company does not equip you well for the next one, no matter how good you think you are.